In the year 2299, an interstellar war rages on. In a bid to save Earth from destruction, you must take control of the Strike Suit – a revolutionary fighter craft with the ability to transform into a lethal suit of space armor.

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About This Game

In the year 2299, an interstellar war rages. Take control of the Strike Suit – a craft with the ability to transform into a hulking suit of space armor - in a bid to save Earth from destruction. Immerse yourself in massive fleet battles where your dogfighting skills will directly affect the fate of the cosmos.

Discover a colorful and vibrant universe, with an epic story spanning 17 unique missions. Engage intelligent enemy fighters and take on colossal capital ships, exploiting weak points in their super-structure to blow them apart piece by piece. Upgrade your Strike Suit and customize your weapon load-outs to tailor combat to your tastes. Take advantage of six craft, including three Strike Suits, to experience dogfighting action as you’ve never seen it before.

The Director’s Cut is the definitive version of the game featuring a next-gen graphical overhaul, restructured campaign and additional content – including the Heroes of the Fleet campaign.

The original SSZ and Infinity looked pretty nice graphics wise. This so-called "Director's Cut" has upped textures... but at a steep cost: lack of shadows - which actually turns this down to looking like a mid-era PS3/XBox 360 game unfortunately. And well, that's what this company has built it from: the consoles.

Now the Born Ready is dead - it's devs moved to another project (who are shilling it on the discussion board) - shadows coming "soon" is no more. Apparently the graphics dev for it had quit the company in the summer.

You get all the DLC, including the Marauder which was promised to be exclusive to Kickstater backers (hah), but unfortunately these suits are unlocked deep into the game.

That being said, it's a decent game for three bucks. I want to go back to the original SSZ, but the gameplay in this version has been tweaked for the better. Difficulty was kinda gruesome in the original - that was fixed.

Can I recommend it? It's hard - but at the price of $19.99. ($3 are for the owners of the original SSZ) Definitely not. Lower than $10? Probably. But I definitely won't be supporting any of these hacks in their future endeavors.

It's been quite a while since I played the original SSZ, swearing to never go back to this pile of... disappointment.

Then SSZ DC came out, and I decided to take it for a spin. Why the heck not.

Has the game changed much since the days of the original? Yes. Graphics have been ramped up, textures reworked, the story makes a little more sense now, mission design was improved a bit...

How about gameplay, then? Well, difficulty has been scaled down, going from "batshit insane" to "barely managable" (on EASY). Controls have improved a bit, all those bricks they call fighters and interceptors now turn a bit better yet do not loose precision aiming. Capital ships now have their weak points displayed on the HUD so you at least have some help with destroying those monstrosities (and you will be doing a whole lot of that).

And this is where it ends.You still need MAD PILOT SKLZ to have a paper cat's chance in hell to get to the good ending. Check out the achievements ranking to confirm this.The Strike Suit itself still feels flimsy and underpowered - so still no piloting a big indestructable mecha with a can of whoopass In Space. (at least you get it sooner, if that's any consolation)And the music? If you expect a pounding rendition of something like, say, MUSIC FROM THE LAUNCH TRAILER, turn around and walk away. Because this is where the composer that wrote that piece went - and you'll never get a pleasant beat in the whole game.

Was I expecting much? Well, yeah, it was supposed to be a game about War Mecha In Space, and those are generally expected to be made of awesome.Did I get much? Not at all. Even in full cheat mode the game is a chore, flooding you with dialogue when you are way too busy to pay attention, and staying perfectly silent when there's a lull in a battle.

I personally have the almost the same feeling as original one expect:1st is the fact that the main story is easier and better looking.2nd visuals are looking better than previous one,but at cost of shadows...sad.3rd it gives you almost all DLC(expect soundtrack)from previous game.4th the voice acting is better,but still far from good.5th is story is somewhat remastered. For example on stage where you get the suit,you instead destroying the wreckage,you destroy drones instead.6th the ending is MUCH easier than previous one. And thats good,as previous game had it very hard.So far my reactions is nearly the same: mixed.This game recivies 7/10 score.The game is of course better than previous one,but the feelness of underpower combined with bad controls makes it not good. And if you own the previous one without buying this one first,this game will have 3$ price tag. But if you bought after,it will cost normal/sale price.Still not a must have.

Guess I can upgrade this to a guarded recommendation. Note that this is not a review of the game itself (see reviews of Strike Suit Zero for a rough idea of how thing shake out), but rather the currently-$3 upgrade to the Director's Cut edition, assuming that you own the original Strike Suit Zero.

There's no doubt that this was a rushed release - a simultaneous PC/XB1/PS4 release was almost certainly too much for a small indie outfit to chew on. Technical issues and missing features, mostly, all adding up to a Director's Cut that ended up being less worthy a purchase than the original release of the game.

The patch released today has addressed several of the key problems. If you've got the hardware to make the game sing, it'll chug along at a solid 60fps with nary a hitch or stutter, and the controls feel all the more responsive for it. You can now also adjust the FOV freely, so if you thought that the game was a little claustrophobic even in third-person mode, you can widen your field of view and see more of the fight at once.

There are still some problems. For some reason, the 'shadows' detail option (one of the supposed major graphical upgrades of this edition) is still greyed out for everyone, and defaults to the 'off' setting to boot. There are also some missing features (mod tools and Steam Workshop support) and content (No integration with Strike Suit Infinity, the survival mode), but those seem to be in the works currently.

Problems as it may have, they've done some good work on the much-maligned campaign of the original Strike Suit Zero here. The story has been rewritten and re-voiced to flow better and generally be more coherent, and the missions themselves have been rejigged to be more exciting (dropping you into spectacular fights sooner) and fairer, with fewer suicidal NPCs to babysit and more checkpoints for if you do fail.

The main value-for-money perk of the Director's Cut is if you hadn't previously bought the Heroes Of The Fleet DLC, which is included as part of the DC upgrade. If you already do have it, then the DC upgrade doesn't seem as exciting a purchase. Hopefully if they do integrate it with Strike Suit Infinity (which I'd love to see with tuned up graphics), it's inherent value would soar.

Either way, it's a bit of a flawed release, but improving. It's a pity that it took so long for the developers to even acknowledge these issues, though, let alone fix them.

UPDATE: FOV has been re-added and shadows are supposedly being worked on, althought I have no idea why they would ship the game without shadows and FOV already working. Still wouldn't recommend in the current state, honestly just stick with the original.

Bought against better judgement (only $3 meh why not), graphics don't seem improved at all, even buggier than the original, shadows and FOV options are completely disabled and the menu even has a link to DLC that doesn't work.

Steam overlay won't show up, voice acting seems just as mediocre as the first (only reason I bring this up is because it was a selling point that they re-recored all the voice lines)

Why does this game exist? Why make a worse verison?

Will update if any of these issues get fixed, until then don't bother spending a dollar on this, let alone three.

As other reviews already describe, this game has a lot of technical issues which makes it pretty much useless right now. Worst offender for me is the framerate which is locked at 47 FPS no matter the settings and the game stutters terribly at that which renders it pretty much unplayable. But other things like the disabled shadow option and FOV slider as well as the missing steam workshop support are also true. And yes the textures are much blurrier than in the original for some reason, even after restarting the game. I also have to mention the missing support for languages other than english which is just blatant false advertising and quite frankly an absolute audacity although despite being german I'm not personnally affected since my english is sufficient to understand the game. (It seems that the language issue was fixed - now you can select the language from the tab in the games properties in steam - the texture blur is fixed as well)What's also pretty worrying is that none of the issues are being addressed by Born Ready Games at the time of this writing and that's always a bad sign (Obviously that point isn't valid anymore for the texture and language issues, but the framerate issues still aren't acknowledged).

So I'd strongly advice everyone to wait and see if these issues get fixed before you consider buying it.

Dependent on the fixes they put out if any I will amend the review.

Edit: I can confirm that the texture blur and missing languages are fixed, now. However the framerate still remains choppy as it was before. If they can fix that as well I will change the review immediatly to a recommendation based on its technical state. That won't cover the gameplay, of course, I'll check that out if I'm able to play the game smoothly.

Update: Practically all issues are being addressed by the developers and they pledged to work on it - that also includes support for DX10 graphics cards in addition to the other issues. Not enough to recommend a purchase, right now, of course, but here's hoping that it'll turn out well in the long run.

Another update: Man, news are rolling out by the minute on this one. Despite the information on the news page which says otherwise, one of the devs just confirmed that the 85% discount for owners of the original will NOT be time limited. So you have the time to wait until all technical issues are fixed.

Update: The DX10 patch is out but I can't test this since I have a DX11 card. Anyway, the framerate is still in the gutter - no change there. So the negative review stays.

More Update: The patch which is supposed to fix the framerate lock and the stuttering didn't work for me unfortunately - now the game is capped at exactly 50 FPS throughout the whole game, including the menus - previously it only happened during gameplay. Also the stuttering is still there. What a disappointment!Edit: Alright, got it working at 60FPS sorta, kind of ish. First I had to set my Logitech F710 gamepad to Direct Input instead of XInput and then the game started of at 60FPS. Now when I start the first mission it starts off at 55FPS (still stutters) and at the time the Arcadia jumps away it reaches 60FPS. That's as far as I got last evening so I don't know if it stays like that. Oh and you need to leave V-Sync activated, otherwise the game stutters and framerate jumps between 60 and 64 FPS. What a mess! But good enough to try out the game itself so I'll see if the stuttering comes back or if it's just at the beginning of the mission.Oh, nevermind, the game just does what it wants - sometimes it starts up at 60 FPS, sometimes it starts at 50 FPS and sometimes it reverts to 60 after changing the control input option. It's just a giant mess!

If looking at this game as a standalone and forgetting everything that came before it, this game is amazing. Great story, fun gameplay, fast pace, decent music, nice steam backgrounds. ^^

If we are comparing this to Strike Suit Zero:

Graphics are more pixelated and less detailed. Random Camera Flair and Blooms block much of the screen. AI seems slightly dumber than the original. The change in story line makes slightly more sense. The new color scheme is not great however. Black Fleet ships should not be orange....

The achievements are much easier to finish since there are fewer of them and the ai has such terrible aim compared to the original. I don't like the fact that I can't see weapon links anymore. Literally takes less than 5 Hours to finish the game and get all achievements since its easier than the original.

However, since all the dlc is bundled into the game itself compared to the original, I would give this game slightly more positive than negative. Very slightly.

Okay... i bought the Original Strike Suit Zero last year when it was first release, and the game was far from a good experience even if the potential was here.

So being a fan of mechs and space combat a la Macross, i decided to give it another chance and see if most of the problems were fixed after more than 1 year of patching.

The answer is simple : NOWhile i feel that combat seems better and difficulty smoother (difficulty spike in the originale released game were crazy), the game is still lacking clarity on what is going on.The problem is, you don't have the luxury of time, in some mission you have to focus on the objectives before it's too late, and you will still wonder WhereTF is the objectives ?To add to frustration, upgrade for you spacecraft is unlocked by completting certain objective during the mission, which add a layer of difficulty and will, may be, take on your nerves, because sometimes, you will feel that you need the upgrade to survive more advanced mission... and failling and upgrade objective means restarting the whole mission, even multiple times at worst...Cherry on the cake, in one mission, it was impossible to do it... i had to destroy all torperdos to unlock it, i had to destroy a corvet to finish the mission... the problem was, one corvet with all parts destroyed (nothing left to lock, no life bar indicator) was still firing torpedoes, and the last corvete i had to destroy to end the mission was too far away from the other corvete... which means it was impossible to destroy the second corvete and destroy the torpedos of the first... after 15 minutes of forward and backward i just pressed Alt+F4I already completed the mission, i just wanted to to get the upgrade i missed, and i don't know if it was a bug, but it was impossible, i could never have enough speed to reach the remaining corvet within my long range missile and be back to destroy the torpedos of the first to avoid failling the objective.

So, i would suggest new buyer to hold their money for now and wait for some patch (again ...).

I hope they will also improve in future patch their confusing 1960 submarine UI.Every target are RED square, every fighter outside your vision are intidcater with RED triangle, and numbers to evaluat distance are written in RED.Now when your objective are hidden between 30 RED identic marker... you will wish that they use more color.This is supposed to be an SF UI combat, we should be able to guess what we are loonking at in one glimpse, not bothering with a colonie of RED dot or square on the screen.

I'm still looking forward for future fixes.The ambiance is nice, dog fight is okay, taking on dreadnought is pretty cool.

NOTE: This short review is based on a single experience of the game, there are no comparisons with the original Strike Suit Zero!

Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut is re-release of the original Strike Suit Zero, extended with the previously released story, and additional ships DLC-s.

The story takes place in 2299. War rages between the United Nations of Earth (U.N.E.) and the Colonial Forces.You play as Adams, a U.N.E. soldier, and the chosen pilot for the prototype fighter called Strike Suit.

The game is an arcade shooter, very similar to the all-time classic Freespace franchise. The missions mostly involve destroying the designated targets and/or survive for a limited time.The gameplay is solid, the controls are responsive and work well. Looking at dozens of ships engaging in fight with eachother can be a visual feast, however graphics wise the game is average.

PROS:- Interesting story, though it's pretty short.- Good experience if you are a fan of Freespace.- Solid voice acting.- Amazing soundtrack.

CONS:- Steam overlay issues.- Missing graphics options.- Visuals are claimed to be next-gen, but it's average at best.- Lack of ship types/designs.- While the gameplay itself is fun, it's based on the following concept for most missions: 1. kill fighters, 2. kill corvettes 3. kill frigattes 4. kill cruisers.- Main campaign is too short.- Occational crashes, and graphics glitches.

Not your average space shooter. Your ship can turn into a Gundam Wing style robot with massive firepower, which is needed to survive the immense number of enemies.The game has a good plot, and is fully voiced, with GOOD voice acting.

As for gameplay, it is easy to control with either keyboard and mouse OR controller -- in fact, the controller support is the best I've seen in a game like this ever.

At $3 for owners of SSZ, this is a steal. The devs really weren't kidding when they said we would be looked after.Even if you don't already have SSZ, considering the extra cost of the DLC, the Directors Cut is still a great deal.

While shadows and FOV are disabled at the moment, the lack of shadows and the 55-ish FOV aren't gamebreakers. That said, I do hope that these issues are fixed, and that complete Rift support is added down the line. 55 FOV really can't compete with the better feel of higher FOVs. The directors cut runs well on my laptop (Nvidia 650M) at max settings, 1080p; I haven't had any framerate issues so far. SSZ:DC pairs well with a HOTAS, I haven't run into any issues with my X52.

The graphics overhaul and better voice acting really add to the game. While SSZ looked nice, the Directors Cut bumps it up a few notches. These visuals aren't Star Citizen grade, but they are a pleasant upgrade nontheless. SSZ:DC is certainly a neat looking game, and all of the extra polys help make everything in the game look more real. The Modeled in pilots are a really cool touch, this addition helps add a better sense of scale to each ship. The better voice acting makes the missions quite a bit more lively, which surprised me because I didn't have a problem with the original voice acting.

The soundtrack is the same treat as it always was, and from what I can tell there aren't any dubstep remixes like the song used in the trailer, which is yet another plus. The earlier Strike Suit is a nice change, but it is also one that I could have done without.

The Directors Cut is the best version of a great game, and I can't recommend it enough to fans of space combat or mecha games.

Let's start with the bad.This game launched with a TONNE of technically issues. The developer has been working to fix the issues. Some of them have been fixed as of time of this review and most of the really bad issues have been sorted out.- No FOV sliders (has since been added)- No DX10 support (has since been added, fully functional as tested on my rig)- No shadows (pending)- Choppy framerate (patches fixed most of the worst instances, only encountered 2 situations where framerate dropped)- A slew of crashes (patches fixed most of the worst instances, only crashed once over 7 hours)

The "meh" and the average.This game is just an upgrade of the previous game, Strike Suit Zero. Most of the content is still the same although the missions have been tweaked and the story has been rewritten. Several actors were called back to record new audio to voice out the slightly changed story.

The writing for the dialogue is not the best, however the voice actors themselves are pretty good. It keeps the story moving while things are exploding all around you.

The game uses a checkpoint system within missions. While they aren't especially sparce and the missions don't drag on too much, once or twice I found myself groaning when I realised that the game's checkpoint put me further back than I would've liked.

Now let's move on to the "good".This game is HELLA FUN! The battles are fast, frantic, and once you start a mission the explosions never stop happening. You'll be taking on enemies ranging from nimble fighters to large capital ships and carriers. Often you'll be taking on all these things over the course of a single mission.

One of the most refreshing aspects of the game's mission design is pretty superb. Objectives change as the battle flows around you, and its one of the few games that does Escort segments right.

Its not uncommon for the game to give you an objective like, "Protect (Ship name)", but the ship you're escorting is far from defenseless and they have much bigger guns. I found myself frequently running back to my defence target because I was getting swarmed by fighters and the ship I was protecting blew them out of the sky.

Which brings me to what I loved best about this game; the sense of immersion it gave me while I was in the cockpit. Your allied ships and fighters are not useless, they're more than capable at blowing up the enemy with your support. Similarly, the enemy ships and fighters are just as capable of blowing you up as well if you're not careful.

To summarize.Technical issues asside, this is one of the best arcadey space combat games I've played in a while. It harkens back to a lot of older arcady space combat titles that were mostly only available on consoles. The game isn't easy when you crank the difficulty up to Hardcore and WILL kick your ♥♥♥ if you're not careful.

Played with a mouse and keyboard set-up, main story campaign completeed in just over 8 hours on Hardcore difficulty. There are quite a few 'Optional Objectives' I've yet to complete in the story missions. There is also the Heroes of the Fleet mission pack which I haven't touched.

I'm not entirely sure which version some of these negative reviews were from, but I've played the entire regular campaign and didn't see any of these issues with my version. I even streamed the entire campaign at 1080p and 60+fps, no issues whatsoever. Unfortunately I'm not a partner of Twitch so I don't have VoDs available, but I intend to go back and do some more runs of this game (because I got the "bad" ending). That's not a shameless plug, but for those still on the fence that want to see some live game-play of this game so they can make their own decision, feel free to drop by my channel and ask me to play the game (if I'm not already playing it), and I'll happily show you. I'm 1orionquest on Twitch.

What I think of the game: Right now there's not many arcade styled space shooters around, so for fans of this genre, this is pretty much all you get, at least for the immediate future. It's not the best out there, but it doesn't suck, I'd say it's slightly above average. There are strange sound levels, for sure. The options menu didn't have a borderless windows mode, which was slightly off-putting for me because I try to stream games. The story, not really the best out there, certainly no Wing Commander, but let's be honest, this game's selling point is mostly the action. And on that department, I believe it delivers. Eearly missions are pretty easy, but some of the late ones, definitely not easy. Sometimes it took me several tries to complete a particular mission or section of a mission. And yes, sometimes the game is a bit vague about what you're supposed to be doing, or you'll find that you'd be better off not actually sticking to the main objective to get better results out of your mission. For the most part though, if you failed a particular part of a mission or can't get past a certain point, I felt in no way that it was the game's fault, it's definitely the player's fault. If you want an easy game you can just blow through in a single sitting without much challenge, or you're just not that good at space shooters, you might not want to buy it. The difficulty curve is definitely there, and it's quite common to die or fail a mission because, well you suck. I was pretty rusty, it's been a while, and I failed some missions pretty badly. The AI is pretty good, matter fact I'd say the AI was better than me on many occasions. They definitely don't just sit there and die or take damage, forcing you to do everything. As a matter of fact, on some missions I pretty much just let the AI do most of the actual work and I sat back and played a "zone defence".

TLDR: I think the issues people had with early versions are fixed, my version has not a single problem of that description. The game itself is above average, be prepared for some challenging missions.

Strike Suit Zero is an excellent game. Spanning multiple missions, this game takes you across a multitude of various action packed scenarios. Fly around in a ship of your choice(as you unlock them of course) including the strike suit(a transforming spacefighter/mech combo), and blow enemies away with your piloting skills. There's a nifty feature where you can evade missiles fired at you by launching an electromagnetic pulse(EMP) but you can't overuse it so the game is fairly difficult not just due to that but other things as well. It's fun though. Fun as ♥♥♥♥.

A great improvment over its first incarantion. First off the huge visual overhaul add a very homeworld'esc feel to the game, which is approriate seeing as it shares its composer. While we are not looking at some form of graphical ♥♥♥♥♥♥ of the tripple A releases, for a small team this is still a nice piece of work!

I havn't finished the main campaign as yet, but am enjoying the differences, you do get the Strike Suit earlier as promised and the tutorial has been made shorter and less static (No more making you press buttons to force it along). Also there is a bit more narrative exsploration, little extras I have noticed in later levels as well (Although that may be simply because I can't remember them as they are small details)

Other things, it runs a lot smoother, I have mid/high rig and I had the rare FPS drop on Strike Suit Zero. I have had none so far, considering the impovments I was actully exspecting more issus. I also play this with a 360 Controller and the responces feel a lot smoother than the original game, I'm not resorting to just spamming missles at everything, which is leading me to try out the other ships in the game.

I don't really have much quips with this game at all. Some of that is personal bias for this genre, but for the cost (If you own the original game, you can't ♥♥♥♥♥. In fact for £2.25 you're getting a nice little game with a lot of replaybillity.

Also the Hero's of the fleet DLC pulls a rarther hilarious GLaDOS but saying much more would be a spoiler.

Probably as close to a non Dynasty Warriors Gundam (although the transforming is more like Macross...) game North America will ever get. >.> /sadpandaAlso fills in small spot of that gap left by the lack of Wing Commander since WCP.For that, this game deserves lots of love!